Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (born 24.10.1932) is a French physicist and a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1979). He was born in Paris. He graduated from the École Normale. In 1955—61 he worked at the Commissariat for Atomic Energy, and in 1961—71 he was professor at the University of Paris. From 1971 he has been professor at the Collège de France and from 1976 director of the School of Physics and Chemistry in Paris.
His research is in the field of superconductivity, the physics of the liquid state and the physics of polymers. Independently of others he predicted (1963) gapless superconductivity. In 1964 he constructed a theory generalising the phenomenological Abrikosov–Gorkov theory of superconductivity to the case of a magnetic field in superconductors. He proposed (1962—64) a theory of the proximity effect. Independently of others he developed (1958) the theory of nuclear diffusion.